Telefonica Results Show O2 Sells Millionth iPhone

First the big stuff which is Telefonica Europe has announced its 2008 year end figures and they're really rather positive. Year on year revenue and OBIDA growth (Operating Income Before Depreciation and Amortization - not an old lady) are up 5.9 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively. Meanwhile the total customer base has jumped nine per cent to 46m and O2 UK is class swot with 10 per cent revenue and OBIDA increases.

Moving this onto a UK centric, techy theme (surprise, surprise with us) and O2 UK has also announced within these results that during this time it shipped its one millionth iPhone since the handset was first introduced in November 2007.
Now this is a pretty big number - especially since (given the choice of handsets available) manufacturers often publicly leap into the air when a model has sold one million units worldwide but I actually thought it would be bigger. For a start global iPhone sales top 13m, while the second generation Phone 3G has been available on fairly generous subsidised contracts for some considerable time. Furthermore, while the original was horrendously expensive it is also easily the most highly marketed mobile phone brand around.

On top of this is it worth noting the Nokia N95 managed to ship 1,000,000 handsets in the UK inside eight months. The iPhone has been available for twice as long.

That said, while it may have been a proportionally slow burner so far I suspect the brand (especially with a third generation model surely less than 4/5 months away) will ultimately rule the roost for some considerable time...